Study Says Undiagnosed Diabetes A Cause For Concern, Even In India

: Admin : 2020-06-27

There is a certain dichotomy that has been arising in the Indian population due to the growing rate of obesity among younger people. There are two types of diabetes, and both of them are categorised to usually occur in individuals belonging to different age groups.

In that, the type 2 kind of diabetes is when the body develops a resistance to insulin rather than the lack of it which is prevalent in type 1. Usually, type 2 diabetes occurred in people who were aged above 45 years and had a higher Body Mass Index. This pattern is said to be reversed now as type 1 is occurring in the later stages of life while younger, leaner people are developing the second type of diabetes.

Reportedly, there has been confusion during diagnosis too. A UK-based study that took into account the experiences of 583 individuals discovered that almost 40 per cent of people provided with a treatment of type 2 diabetes when they were instead suffering from type 1. Misdiagnosis could prove detrimental to an individual’s health and result in diabetic ketoacidosis.

Dr Richard Oram of the Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Science at the University of the Exter Medical School in the UK stated, “Diagnosing the right diabetes type is an increasingly difficult challenge for clinicians, as we now know that type 1 diabetes can occur at any age. This task is even harder in India, as more cases of type 2 diabetes occur in people with low BMI.”

To make the process of diagnosis of diabetes more convenient for the Indian people, researchers got together to analyse the genetic risk score. The motive was to assess whether it could aid a doctor in better identifying both types of the disease.

They took the analysis of 931 individuals into consideration. This group comprised people who had type 1 and 2 diabetes as well as the ones who didn’t suffer from it. A comparison was drawn with samples of certain number of Europeans from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium study, in a research led by Dr GR Chandak.

He observed, “It’s interesting to note that different SNPs are more abundant among Indian and European patients. This opens up the possibility that environmental factors might be interacting with these SNPs to cause the disease.” Genetic differences were noted between Indian and European populations and this assisted in making the diagnosis more specific for Indians. The current genetic risk score was indeed found to be beneficial in detecting the type of diabetes among the populace of the Indian continent.

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